Quick: What does your brand stand for?

If you can’t answer that, it means consumers can’t, either. Which means you’re losing money, at this very moment, to competitors who can articulate what they stand for.

Let’s be clear: Uncovering this truth isn’t easy. It means making some difficult choices. It means honing in on the one thing that makes your brand great—at the expense of many other things that might be very good.

But it’s worth it.

Because once you’ve planted your stake in the ground, you create something that no one can take away: an identity.

And it’s this core identity—not a print ad or billboard—that gives consumers an emotional attachment to your brand. That creates true, lasting success that isn’t dependent on how successful (or not) your last promotion was. Or how viral (or not) your last video was.

Y&L is built to help brands take this leap.

We help them discover (or re-discover) this hard-to-pin-down thing that is not only their reason for being—but also their ultimate competitive advantage.

We help brands take a stand.

We KnowHomeowners

We’ve developed a practice around homeowners, working with brands that offer products and services for the home. We know what makes them tick and why they do what they do.

We KnowThe Active Mindset

People who love the outdoors or a particular sport can instantly tell if you’re truly one of them, or if you’re faking it. That’s why we love working with these brands and becoming one with the client’s target—resulting in some of our biggest challenges and most satisfying successes.

We KnowBeverage

First comes curious awareness; then optimistic trial, loyalty and—when it’s done correctly—proselytization. Our history with beverages has shown us how to combine smart positioning, memorable packaging, targeted promotions and charming public interactions to change an indifferent public into cheerful, willing, voluntary brand zealots.

We KnowRestaurants

We know the pace of restaurant advertising. Working on a restaurant is not like working on other types of businesses, and a lot of agencies are not prepared for it. As deadlines shorten, details are missed and emergencies arise; their work becomes shortsighted and reactionary. Our experience has taught us how to keep the pace while continually building a brand.

Still not convinced? There’s also this: we wrote the book on restaurant marketing.Selling Eating: Restaurant Marketing Beyond the Word Delicious, is at its core the summation of all our restaurant knowledge—a book that challenges the conventional thinking of current restaurant advertising and instructs brands on how they can connect with customers on a real, human level.

Capabilities

We are an independent full-service agency located in a 1920’s schoolhouse in downtown Indianapolis. Over the last 30 years we’ve racked up a little bit of experience in creating, sustaining and leveraging epic brand stories through our wide array of services including: strategic marketing and proprietary research, multi-platform media planning and buying through EchoPoint Media, and creative in every imaginable platform.

Culture

Every morning, school bells ring (and a few sleepy creatives scatter) in the halls of a 100-year-old school building, formerly known as Public School No. 9. Now, it’s home to us—Young & Laramore—a Midwestern, mid-sized agency that was recently declared one of Ad Age’s Best Places to Work. We were also called “the one where you’d like to work” by Adweek in their “The United States of Ad Agencies” publication.

That’s the high-level, Google-result version of “us.” And it’s not far off. But if you asked us, we’d talk about Young & Laramore as being “anti-established” in 1983—we don't answer to a holding company—and plan to keep it that way. And, while we have perks just like any other ad agency (think: dog days, donuts, parlor games and above average coffee), what keeps Y&L employees happy is our lofty ambition to seek out clients who—like us—want to challenge conventions.

It’s probably that very mindset that has allowed us to be lucky enough to fill our halls with some truly smart people over the years. It’s hard to find a “common thread” in Y&L; because our commonalities are that we enjoy the uncommon. There are people in our building who are cyclists, amateur chefs and not-so-amateur chefs. We have outdoor enthusiasts, national columnists, marathon runners, beer geeks, book readers—and book writers. We even have a Packers fan.

And ultimately, it’s those people who are the driving force behind our work—the thing we show up for every day, that brought us all here in the first place.

An “echo point” is the target that will resonate your message best—the people who will become personal advocates, who will spread your word, who will respond in the way you want them to, and encourage those around them to respond as well. We love finding echo points. It’s not for everyone—it requires research that leads to insights. It takes more work than some media planners and buyers are interested in— finding the people who will echo your message. It’s what gets us revved up.

EchoPoint Media is a full-service traditional and digital media buying agency offering a complete suite of services from strategic planning to comprehensive analytics across all media types on a local, regional and national level.